Do games run equally fast in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7?

By Koen CrijnsFriday 9 November 2012 14:58

Introduction

Gamers are not really lining up to make the transition to Windows 8, because it's not really clear yet if games will run as well in the new OS from Microsoft. Hardware.Info will once and for all put that issue to rest, by letting the benchmarks speak.

Right now there really isn't a good reason for gamers to switch to the new operating system, but sooner or later that day will arrive. In the end we all had to give up on Windows XP, albeit some later than others.

But like it or not, Windows 8 is here and hardware manufacturers are gearing their new products toward it. AMD and Nvidia will of course keep releasing new Windows 7 drivers, but many driver teams will shift their focus to Windows 8. On top of that, the latest version of DirectX, 11.1, only exists for Windows 8, even if there aren't any games that can take advantage of it.

We want to find out whether game performance is different in Windows 8 than in Windows 7. We took the flagship graphics card from AMD (Radeon HD 7970) and Nvidia (GeForce GTX 680) along with the latest drivers and ran a series of gaming benchmarks in Windows 7 and 8. Our test system consisted of an Intel Core i7 3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) processor, an ASUS P7X79 Pro motherboard, 16 GB Corsair DDR3-1600 RAM, a Samsung Spinpoint F1 hard disk and a Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200 watt power supply.